Telemundo Media to Offer Bilingual Approach to Advertisers

September 30, 2012, 9:11 pm

By TANZINA VEGA

In a move to increase its reach with both English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic consumers, Telemundo Media will announce on Monday a new advertising platform in conjunction with Comcast Spotlight, an advertising unit of Comcast. The initiative will be called Telemundo Plus and will allow advertisers to show ads in either language throughout the NBCUniversal, Comcast and Telemundo networks.

A major part of the strategy includes extracting the vast amounts of user data the companies own, said Andrew Ward, group vice president of Comcast Media 360, a division of Comcast Spotlight. Mr. Ward said the company was able to combine subscriber data with third-party data like voter registration files and census da ta, as well as data from companies like Experian, which collects credit scores, and Polk, which collects automobile data.

For now, advertisers will be able to specify an audience by neighborhood, but the aim is to approach the same level of precision available to marketers who run digital campaigns.

“What we want to do is maximize relevance,” Mr. Ward said. “When you put the right message in front of a right audience that level of engagement comes through.”

Dan Lovinger, executive vice president for advertising sales at Telemundo Media, said the new platform would help advertisers reach Hispanic audiences of all types. “Not just Spanish-dominant speakers, not just English-dominant Hispanics, but all of them,” Mr. Lovinger said. “When you look across Hispanic Americans, the 50 million don't all look alike, speak alike or come from the same socioeconomic platform.”

Advertisers will be able to focus their ad buys on specific geographic ar eas of Latinos, like a neighborhood of English-speaking Hispanics in New York or a neighborhood of Spanish-speaking Hispanics in California. Advertisers will also be able to show an English-language ad during Spanish-language shows and a Spanish-language ad during English-language programs.

So far, just a handful of advertisers have signed up to test the platform, including T-Mobile and Toyota. A third advertiser declined to be named, and representatives for Toyota were unavailable to comment. Toyota has run ads for its Camry in both languages using the new platform, said Chris Traina, a spokesman for Conill, the agency that worked on the ads.

E-Books Expand Their Potential With Serialized Fiction

September 30, 2012, 9:05 pm

By JULIE BOSMAN

Could serialized fiction finally force the e-book to evolve?

Various ventures are trying to satisfy a common complaint about e-books: that they are simply black-and-white digital reproductions of long-form print books, flat and unoriginal in their design and concept. One variation, what publishers call enhanced e-books, with audio and video elements woven throughout the text, has largely fallen flat with readers.

But serialized fiction, where episodes are delivered to readers in scheduled installments much like episodes in a television series, has been the subject of an unusual amount of experimentation in publishing in recent months. In September, Amazon announced Kindle Serials, stories sold for $1.99 and published in short episodes that download onto the Kindle as the episodes are released. Three of the first eight serials were produced by Plympton, a new literary studio.

In August, Byliner, a digital publisher, announced that it would begin a new digital imprint devoted to serialized fiction, with work by Margaret Atwood and Joe McGinniss at its start.

One of the most talked-about new experiments is taking serialized fiction a step further. Set to make its debut on Monday, it is a novel called “The Silent History” that is available on the Apple iPhone and its iPad. It includes interactive, user-generated elements.

The app itself is free, but readers pay for the book's content, which arrives in daily installments of about 15 minutes' worth of reading.

Eli Horowitz, a former publisher of McSweeney's, said the project grew out of his despair over the state of e-books when they began to emerge in earnest several years.

“It was a lit tle bit of a depressing moment,” Mr. Horowitz said last week. “We spent a lot of time making these print books into beautiful objects. And it seemed depressing to just squeeze them into a device. The prettiest e-book was still a little uglier than the worst book.”

He created “The Silent History” with Russell Quinn, a co-founder of the digital studio Spoiled Milk; Kevin Moffett, the author of “Further Interpretations of Real-Life Events,” a story collection; and Matthew Derby, an author and designer.

They wrote a 160,000-word book and, using the iPhone for inspiration, created a “scavenger hunt” element allowing readers to see more story lines by visiting specific locations - like China and Washington, D.C. - that are outlines on a map within the app. Users can also add their own story lines.

The whole idea, Mr. Horowitz said, is finding ways for devices like the iPhone to tell a story in a way that a print book could not.

“It's a w ay to create a communal reading experience, so people can experience it in a certain time span together,” Mr. Horowitz said. “What we tried to make was something that allowed for the reader to approach it in his or her way. We wanted to allow for all levels of interest and obsession.”

Apple\'s Plans for Internet Radio Come Up Against Big Music Publisher

Music September 28, 2012, 7:29 pm

By BEN SISARIO

The rough news for Apple lately is not only about its much-derided new maps program.

Apple's plans for an Internet radio service have recently hit a snag over the licensing of music controlled by Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony and the estate of Michael Jackson, which recently became the world's biggest music publisher.

The two, naturally, are at odds over what rate Apple should pay to stream Sony/ATV songs on its service, but what's new is that Apple needs to negotiate at all. Typically, streaming services have obtained publishing rights from the major performing-rights organizations, Ascap and BMI, which for decades have acted as clearinghouses on behalf of publishers and songwriters.

But in recent years, some music companies have moved away from that model, figuring that the returns would be better if they handled licensing deals directly and opted out of the “blanket” rates set by those organizations.

When an investor group led by Sony bought EMI Music Publishing in June for $2.2 billion, Sony/ATV took control of the world's largest music publishing catalog, with two million songs, including most Beatles songs as well as current hits by Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. EMI had already withdrawn its digital rights from Ascap, and Sony/ATV will follow suit with the rest of its catalog, effective Jan. 1.

In other words, just as Apple hopes to line up the licenses it needs to operate a streaming radio service, obtaining those licenses has suddenly become more complicated.

Critics of Sony's acquisition of EMI, and of the Universal Music Group's parallel deal for EMI's record la bels for $1.9 billion, warned that this consolidation would give the companies too much market power. These companies will now be so big, the argument goes, that no credible Internet radio service can operate without making a deal.

Martin N. Bandier, the chairman of Sony/ATV, said in an interview on Friday that the disagreement with Apple was simply an effort to get a higher royalty rate for his songwriters.

“This wasn't us not wanting the service,” Mr. Bandier said. “We want the service. It's like oxygen. We just want to be paid fairly, no different than the N.F.L. refs. Do you want replacement writers?”

Apple declined to comment. The news of Sony/ATV's negotiating standoff with Apple was first reported by The New York Post.

While Ascap and BMI still handle digital licensing for Sony/ATV's catalog through the end of the year, it was unclear whether Apple would be able to go to those organizations now. Mr. Bandier said any deal struck in the n ext few months would expire once Sony/ATV withdraws its digital rights in January. But Vincent Candilora, the senior vice president for licensing at Ascap, said that any deal would last as long as its agreed-upon term.

“When Ascap enters into a final license with any licensee,” Mr. Candilora said, “the permissions to the songs in our repertory at the time remain with that license until it expires.”

A spokesman for Sony/ATV said the company is still negotiating with Apple.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

Advertising Week Begins Monday, Focusing on Technology and Returning Veterans

By STUART ELLIOTT

It has been said many times that the most popular words in the advertising business are “new and improved.” But the phrase offers a way to describe changes in store when the ninth annual Advertising Week takes place in New York next week.

The event, scheduled to begin on Monday and end next Friday, has new sponsors - among them Adobe, Amazon, AMC Networks, Machinima, Pandora, Premier Retail Networks, Telemundo, Time Inc. and Twitter - who will join returning sponsors like AOL, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft.

Also new is a trade show, billed as a technology showcase, which is being called the Advertising Week Experience - possibly because the initials spell “AWE.” The estimated 40 exhibitors will be based at the Times Center on West 41st Street.

“It will not be a shlockfest,” said Matt Scheckner, who has been the executive director of Advertising Week since it began in 2004. “It has a very classy look.”

In another new step, Advertising Week 2012 will begin what it calls Operation Deploy, in partnership with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. The goal of the initiative is to find jobs in the ad industry for returning veterans. Two dozen agencies and companies have agreed to interview job seekers, with a target for each participant to hire one veteran.

On the improvement front, organizers of Advertising Week are hoping to untangle logistical difficulties, primarily complaints from attendees that the sites for events are spread across Manhattan.

So the more than 150 panels, speeches and other events will take place at fewer sites that are closer to each other. For example, scores of events will take place in Times Square, at the Times Center; the Nederlander Theater, also on West 41st Street; a newly refurbished Liberty Theater, with entrances on West 41st and West 42nd Streets; and the Nasdaq Market S ite, at 4 Times Square.

Another improvement, Mr. Scheckner said, will be “to try to make more sense of the program” by grouping events into tracks that include mobile marketing, the intersection of Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley and multicultural marketing.

More information about Advertising Week can be found on the Web site advertisingweek.com.  There is also a Twitter feed under the handle @advertisingweek.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

Baton Rouge Newspaper Sees an Opportunity in New Orleans

September 28, 2012, 5:47 pm

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

It's a Hail Mary pass for New Orleans newspaper lovers dreading the day the city no longer has a daily paper. Starting on Monday, the first day the Times Picayune no longer prints every day, the Advocate from Baton Rouge will offer home delivery of a New Orleans edition.

Many of the bylines in the paper will be familiar to readers there. That's because the Advocate hired seven people who left the Times Picayune to work in its New Orleans bureau. The publisher, David Manship, whose family has owned the paper since 1909, said that the Advocate had not had a reporter in New Orleans since its correspondent moved back to Baton Rouge, some 80 miles to the northwest, during Hurricane Katrina.

Mr. Ma nship said the new edition, which will say New Orleans edition in red banner on the front, will feature coverage of basic news beats like city government. He will wait to see how it is received before deciding whether to expand into areas like arts coverage.

“If this thing goes like we hope it would, then we would add some additional staff,” said Mr. Manship.

But the Times Picayune is not taking this expansion into its turf lightly. Ricky Mathews, the president of NOLA Media Group who on Monday will take over as publisher of the Times Picayune, said that the company has been planning for six months to build its presence in Baton Rouge. He said the paper already has three reporters there but will now add 16 staff members to its Baton Rouge bureau - 12 on the editorial side and four on the sales side.

He said he welcomed the competition.

“We believe that competition is good and what we've got to do is serve this region really well no matter who it is,” said Mr. Mathews.

In May, the Times Picayune announced that it would scale back print production to three days a week and shift its emphasis to its free Web site, Nola.com. Widespread layoffs followed, and some longtime Times Picayune employees left voluntarily.

In New Orleans, the newspaper war has already begun. Starting on Sept. 24, the Advocate has handed out 11,000 to 18,000 free copies throughout the city. Mr. Manship said more than 6,000 households had signed up for home delivery.

Both papers hope the changes will help with their declining circulation. According to data tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Times Picayune's circulation from Monday through Friday declined to 134,639 in March, from 142,700 the same time the year before. The Advocate's circulation from Monday through Friday declined to 76,263 in March, compared with 82,695 the same time the year before.

Mr. Manship said that the success of the New Orleans editio n depends heavily on advertisers in that city.

“If the advertising community in New Orleans doesn't support it, then I would have to rethink the whole thing,” said Mr. Manship. “If I don't make money on it, as nice a guy as I am, I can't afford to throw money into a hole.”

As It Followed a Car Chase, Fox News Showed a Man Kill Himself

By BRIAN STELTER

The Fox News Channel, in the course of following a car chase live in Arizona, on Friday broadcast the suicide of the man who was being pursued by the authorities.

The network anchor at the time, Shepard Smith, apologized to viewers after returning from a sudden commercial break. “That won't happen again on my watch, and I'm sorry,” Mr. Smith said, clearly shaken by the circumstances.

The broadcast immediately spurred scrutiny about the network's tendency to take car chases live during its daytime newscasts. Mr. Smith, in particular, has developed a reputation for his colorful play-by-play coverage of such scenes.

Mr. Smith had been following the chase, then switched to other news, including the violence in Syria, before returning to Arizona as the man being pursued pulled his car over. “Looks like he's a little disoriented or something,” Mr. Smith said as the man ran down a path.

The Associated Pres s reported that the chase may have been provoked by a carjacking.

The man left the car, then stepped a few feet off the path into a grassy area and pulled a gun out of his right pocket. He pulled the trigger and fell face-first to the ground before Fox cut to Mr. Smith, who was leaning forward and saying to his producers, “Get off, get off, get off, get off it.” He raised his voice and said again: “Get off it. Get off it.”

A Fox spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the network would continue to show such chases.

Car chases, captured by local news helicopters in some major cities, are frequently shown on a 5- to 10-second delay because of the possibility of violence. Fox and, to a lesser extent, several other national cable news networks, like HLN and MSNBC, sometimes pick up the local feeds, especially on relatively slow news days.

Mr. Smith said on the air afterward: “W hen the guy pulled over and got out of the vehicle, we went on delay. So that's why I didn't talk for about 10 seconds. We created a five-second delay, as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds. That's what we did with the picture we were showing you, so we would see in the studio what was happening five seconds before you did, so that if anything went horribly wrong, we'd be able to cut away from it without subjecting you to it.”

But the Fox control room did not cut away in time. Then, Mr. Smith realized, it was too late.

He leaned back in his chair, disgusted, and the network cut to a commercial break.

After the break, Mr. Smith apologized at length. “We really messed up,” he said. “And we're all very sorry. That didn't belong on TV.”

The case called to mind a televised suicide in Los Angeles in 1998, when a man unfurled a banner that read “HMO's are in it for the money. Live free, love safe or die,” then set his truck on fire and shot himself with a shotgun. The scene was broadcast live by several Los Angeles television stations, including two that had been running children's programming beforehand. One of the stations' feeds was repeated by the cable news channel MSNBC.

After that incident, some local stations apologized, put  time delays on future live coverage and instructed aerial cameramen during to send back wide shots rather than close-ups during chases.

Giving With an Eye on the Impact

September 28, 2012, 3:19 pm

By BUCKS EDITORS

Paul Sullivan's Wealth Matters column this week discusses philanthropists who not only want their donations to do good, they are looking for a way to measure the impact of their giving.

It's called impact investing, and has become increasingly popular over the last decade or so.

While Paul is writing mainly about people have millions to give to charitable causes, people with far less in their bank accounts have also done impact investing. He mentions GiveWell, a nonprofit group that says most of its money comes from smaller donors.

Have you ever donated money with the idea of making a measurable impact? Tell us about your experience.

Headline in The Onion About Ahmadinejad Taken Seriously in Iran

The satirical report, "Gallup Poll: Rural Whites Prefer Ahmadinejad to Obama," was posted as truth by the FARS news agency on Friday, The Lede blog reported.

Upsides and Downsides of Family Loans

September 28, 2012, 1:34 pm

By RON LIEBER

In this weekend's Your Money column, I provide a primer on creating a family loan pool. The advantages here are many. There is potentially more money available if many family members contribute. Many people can participate in setting the rules and distribution of loans, so emotion is less likely to get in the way. And it may be easier to enforce those rules if an entire clan is standing behind the loan.

So what are the downsides of loaning money to a family member, and can a structure like the one I describe help avoid some of the potential pitfalls?

Universal Closes on EMI Deal, Becoming, by Far, Biggest of Remaining Big Three

Music September 28, 2012, 1:32 pm

By BEN SISARIO

The Universal Music Group closed on its $1.9 billion acquisition of EMI Music on Friday, a week after receiving regulatory clearance in Europe and the United States and more than 10 months after it first made the deal with Citigroup.

As a condition of approval, Universal will be forced to sell off about a third of EMI's assets to other music companies. Even so, it will be the largest, by far, of the three remaining major record companies, with a global market share of about 36 percent.

Universal has now paid the balance of the purchase price to Citigroup, after paying roughly 90 percent of it earlier this month, Citi and Universal's parent company, Vivendi, announce d on Friday. In its arrangement with Citi, struck last November, Universal assumed the full regulatory risk for the deal, agreeing to pay the full $1.9 billion regardless of the decisions by the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission and other government agencies around the world.

“This is a next step towards ensuring the health of our industry,” Lucian Grainge, the chairman of Universal, said in a statement. “EMI is finally returning to people who have music in their blood. We are acquiring incredible labels and a roster of stellar talent, including top-selling artists like Katy Perry, Lady Antebellum, the Beatles and the Beach Boys. We remain true to our vision of investing in EMI, growing the company as a vibrant source of new music, offering consumers more choice and supporting the growth of online music services.”

Just 15 years ago there were six major labels, but their ranks have consolidated through successive mergers.

According to the European Commission's conditions for approving the deal, Universal must sell off EMI's prestigious Parlophone label along with a long list of other labels and assets, which means that the worldwide rights to release music by superstars like Coldplay, Pink Floyd and Kylie Minogue will be up for grabs.

Those assets might be worth well over $500 million, and according to the European regulators' conditions, the majority of them must be sold to a single music company, to shore up competition.

The sales have not begun, but among the likely bidders are the Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and BMG Rights Management, which is backed by Bertelsmann and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

On a Night Crowded With Hits, \'Big Bang\' and \'Grey\'s Anatomy\' Stand Out

By BILL CARTER

The television season's first Thursday - a night always packed with hit shows - delivered some of the most-watched episodes of premiere week with established favorites like “The Big Bang Theory” and “ Grey's Anatomy” coming back strong.

New entries like “Elementary” on CBS and “Last Resort” on ABC got off to promising starts. And Fox's “X-Factor” proved it has found its audience level, which is lower than last year but still competitive on a tough night.

NBC's results for its comedy are the hardest to gauge because, while better in every case than last week, they are most likely skewed because NBC stations in two cities, Cleveland and Baltimore, carried an N.F.L. game between the Browns and the Ravens Thursday night, no doubt to huge local audiences. NBC's true results won't be clear until about 4 p.m. Friday.

What is clear is that “Big Bang” remains the biggest power on Thursday. It has th e most viewers of any show, 15.3 million, and the best rating in the advertiser-preferred audience segment of 18- to 49-year-olds-a 4.8. That has been topped in premiere week only by ABC's comedy powerhouse “Modern Family,” which had a 5.5 rating.

But ABC had strong results for a drama it has had to fear might be fading, “Grey's Anatomy.” Perhaps because of its dealing with a compelling cliffhanger from last season, “Grey's” posted a strong 4.3 rating in the 18-49 group, with about 11.5 million viewers.

The network's new drama, “Last Resort,” which had probably the best critical reception of any new series, scored a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 audience at 8 p.m. with a solid nine million viewers. Best news for that drama, it added about 700,000 viewers in its second half-hour.

“Elementary,” CBS's latest crime drama (the only kind of drama the network does anymore), recorded a solid 3.1 in the 18-49 rating, with a total of 13.3 million viewer s. The fact that it exceeded its lead-in, “Person of Interest,” in the 18-49 segment was a promising sign. “Person of Interest,” meanwhile, turned in a typically sound 18-49 number (3.0) and a resounding total viewer total 14.2 million.

But much will be made of the precipitous drop in ratings for the premiere of “Two and a Half Men” on CBS. Statistically it was down 67 percent from last season (when it was on Monday) but that number was hugely inflated by the national attention surrounding the departure of Charlie Sheen. The actual numbers for “Men” last night, a 3.5 with 12.3 million viewers, would not be bad for any network show, though CBS will surely watch closely where they move from here.

Fox now knows basically what it has in “X-Factor” â€" a more-than-respectable show on a super-competitive night, though not anything like the blockbuster the network once hoped the show might become. “X” averaged a 3.2 rating in the 18-49 segment, down only 6 percent from last week despite the greatly increased competition. It had 9.2 million total viewers. The numbers are still well better than the average for network shows.

“Glee” may be more a concern. Once a breakout hit, the show slid to a 2.5 rating within the 18-49 group, which had been the core for the series. That was down 14 percent from a week ago; it had 5.9 million viewers.

NBC's comedies did show some growth, but football was surely a boost. The four shows jumped by an average of about half a million viewers over totals from last week. As usual, “The Office” was the best performer, and its 18-49 rating, a 2.4, looked much more robust than the puny 2.1 for its premiere a week ago. But that will surely come down when football numbers are factored out.

And then it will go up again, as delayed viewing is eventually counted in. “The Office” has always been among the biggest gainers in all of televisi on when delayed viewing is included. The other NBC shows also perform at more acceptable levels when those numbers are included.

Indeed, all the shows, especially on a competitive night like Thursday, need to be re-assessed first after three days, and then after seven days of recorded viewing is reported by Nielsen.

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

The Breakfast Meeting: New F.T.C. Rules for Children Online, and Being a Replacement Official

September 28, 2012, 9:51 am

By NOAM COHEN

The Federal Trade Commission is expected to tighten rules soon about Web sites that collect information about children, Natasha Singer writes, greatly increasing the need to obtain parental permission for common practices like using cookies to track young users' activities online, or their location via a mobile phone, or accepting photographs submitted by children under 13. The current federal rule, which dates to 1998, requires parental consent before Web sites can collect personal information like phone numbers or physical addresses from children, but those rules can appear antiquated considering how technology has changed over more than a decade.

The authorities arrested the man thought to be responsibl e for “The Innocence of Muslims” - the crude YouTube video that set off riots in the Muslim world - for violating the terms of his probation in a 2010 bank fraud case, Brooks Barnes reported. The man, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was ordered held without bail because the magistrate considered him a flight risk. He was arrested for eight violations of his terms of probation, including lying to law-enforcement officers.

• Google's senior executive in Brazil on Wednesday was questioned by the authorities over a video on YouTube, which is owned by Google, that criticized a local mayoral candidate, Claire Cain Miller reported. A Brazilian court had ordered the video taken down as violating local election laws and after rejecting Google's appeal issued an arrest warrant for the executive, Fabio Coelho. Late Wednesday, the video was taken down, and Mr. Coelho wrote a blog post registering Google objection to the court's restriction of “legitimate free speech videos” t hat “should remain available in Brazil.”

On Thursday night, an hour before kickoff at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, a roar could be heard - it wasn't for the hometown Ravens, Adam Himmelsbach reports, but for the regular officials who had been locked out by the N.F.L. owners, who installed replacements. The referee working the game, Gene Steratore, a 10-year veteran presided over the opening coin toss at midfield and said simply: “Good evening, men. It's good to be back.”

• The deal that brought back the officials was well on its way to being done, the union officials and owners say, but the “Monday Night Football” debacle certainly got everyone's attention, Judy Battista reported. She writes:

When the league and the union returned to the negotiating table Tuesday, each side was more conciliatory. The officials wanted to get back to work and undoubtedly realized this was the time to get the best deal they could. In th e end, though, the league probably moved more than the officials to complete the deal.

• The replacement officials were forbidden to speak to the media, but now that the replacements are being replaced, they are free to talk. One of the replacements, Jeff Sadorus, a former college official, spoke to Sam Borden of the work as “something I had wanted to do forever and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” though the barrage of criticism began to take a toll. And, now that it is all over, there is a final indignity over the uniform: “I think in the contract we signed, it said we had to return the equipment,” he said. “It's O.K. - I have a lot of stripes.”

Facebook already reminds users when it's time to send birthday greetings to their “friends,” but a new tool that the company announced on Thursday will allow users to mail a physical gift as well, Somini Sengupta reports. Gift givers can pay with a credit card and recipients will have to offer up their offline addresses so a gift can be delivered.

Friday Reading: Teens Say Parents Text and Drive

September 28, 2012, 8:07 am

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Fewer Wealthy Americans Say They\'re Conservative Investors

September 27, 2012, 2:15 pm

By ANN CARRNS

Fewer affluent Americans describe themselves as “conservative” investors, suggesting that their tolerance for risk may be rebounding after some tumultuous years.

Thirty percent describe themselves as leaning toward lower-risk investment and savings options (like “mutual funds, bonds, savings  and money market accounts”), down from 36 percent a year ago and 50 percent two years ago, according to findings of the Merrill Lynch Affluent Insights survey.

The telephone survey, of 1,000 adults with assets of more than $250,000 to invest, was conducted in August by Braun Research on behalf of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Th e shift in attitude toward risk is most clear among affluent investors younger than 50. For instance, about a quarter of investors age 18 to 34 describe themselves as conservative, compared with 52 percent two years ago. These are investors who had become quite wary of the stock market, because of its volatility in the economic downturn. And a quarter of those age 35 to 50 also describe themselves as conservative, compared with 45 percent two years ago.

What is your risk appetite these days? Are you willing to consider individual stocks or alternative investments, or are you sticking with index funds and savings accounts?

Digital Notes: An Apology for Kim Dotcom, and a New Royalties Deal for Clear Channel

Music September 27, 2012, 2:11 pm

By BEN SISARIO

In the latest twist to the story of Kim Dotcom and his defunct file-sharing site Megaupload, the prime minister of New Zealand has publicly apologized to Mr. Dotcom after it was determined that the country's foreign intelligence service spied on him illegally.

Mr. Dotcom was arrested in January after the police raided his home near Auckland on behalf of the United States government, which had indicted him and six others on charges of criminal copyright infringement. According to a recent report by the inspector general of New Zealand's intelligence service, the Government Communications Security Bureau, the agency gathered information on Mr. Dotcom for use by the police, but had no right to do so because Mr. Dotcom holds a permanent resident's visa.

“I apologize to Mr. Dotcom,” Prime Minister John Key said on Thursday, according to TVNZ. “I apologize to New Zealanders because every New Zealander that sits within the category of having permanent residency or is a New Zealand citizen is entitled to be protected from the law when it comes to the G.C.S.B., and we failed to provide that appropriate protection for him.”

Mr. Dotcom has been released on bail and is awaiting an extradition trial next year. In the months since his arrest, he has successfully challenged some aspects of the case against him in New Zealand courts, including winning more favorable bail conditions and forcing United States prosecutors to turn over Federal Bureau of Investigation files to his defense.

As diverting as the case may be to watch unfold, it is being watched intently by the entertainment and technology industries and by legal experts, wh o see it as a test of whether the United States can pursue copyright infringement cases overseas.

Another Radio Royalties Deal: Clear Channel Communications, the radio giant that in June took a big step in a new direction over how it pays royalties through a deal with Taylor Swift's record label, has now made a similar deal with another independent label, this one behind major alternative rock bands like Mumford & Sons and Phoenix.

Clear Channel announced on Thursday that it would pay the label, Glassnote, an undisclosed percentage of its revenue whenever music by Glassnote's acts are played on its terrestrial stations or on Clear Channel's Internet radio streams, like those available on its iHeartRadio app.

Such deals break with almost a century of copyright history by letting record labels collect a royalty when their songs are played on the air. Under United States copyright law, stations are required to pay only music publishers and songwriters for the music they play.

In exchange, these deals with labels allow Clear Channel to change its online royalty method from a “penny rate” - in which it pays a fraction of a cent every time someone listens to a song online - to a percentage of its advertising revenue, which could reduce its online royalty costs.

Clear Channel's first such arrangement was with Big Machine, the label behind Ms. Swift. Last week Big Machine made a similar deal with Entercom Communications, which owns more than 100 radio stations around the country.

Glassnote's arrangement with Clear Channel, which takes effect Monday, is well timed for the label. This week, it released “Babel,” the new album by Mumford & Sons, a young British folk-rock group, which is projected to sell more than 600,000 copies in its first week and be one of the most popular rock records of the year.

Ben Sisario writes about the music industry. Follow @sisario on Twitter.

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When Non-Driving Factors Affect Auto Insurance Premiums

September 27, 2012, 11:41 am

By ANN CARRNS

Automobile insurers may use factors unrelated to driving, like education and occupation, in determining rates.

Now, a consumer group is urging state insurance commissioners to restrict insurers' ability to use those factors, arguing that the result has been unfairly high rates for lower-income drivers. Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation of America, said in a call this week with reporters that premiums should mainly reflect factors like accidents, speeding tickets and miles driven.

The federation analyzed auto insurance premiums quoted on the Web sites of the five largest insurers (State Farm, Allstate, Geico, Progressive and Farmer's) to price minimum liability coverage i n five cities. Using an example of coverage for a 35-year-old woman with a good driving record, the study obtained quotes while varying characteristics like marital status, education level, occupation, home ownership and gaps in insurance coverage. Her driving record was the same in all instances.

The group found that in most cases, annual premiums were much lower if the woman was a married homeowner with a college degree, a professional job and continuous insurance coverage. In four of the examples, the premiums fell by at least 68 percent.

Premiums tended to be high if the woman was single, rented in a moderate-income area, had a high school degree, worked as a bank teller or clerical worker and had a gap in insurance coverage.

The analysis first obtained quotes for the “standard” example - a 35-year-old single bank teller with a high school degree and good credit record who rents a house in a moderate-income Zip code. The hypothetical woman had driven 15 years with no accidents or moving violations, and sought the minimum required liability coverage on a 2002 Honda Civic. Then, the researchers changed the criteria to see what the impact was on the quoted premium.

For instance, the “standard” quote of $2,696 from Progressive, for coverage in Baltimore, fell to $2,212 when the woman's status was changed from single to married. And when all the criteria were changed to more a “favorable” status, the quote dropped to $718.

J. Robert Hunter, insurance director at the consumer federation, said a difference of nearly $2,000 based on non-driving factors is “patently unfair” and “actuarially unsound.”

Jeff Sibel, a spokesman for Progressive, said the insurer “works to price each driver's policy as accurately as possible, so that every driver pays the appropriate amount based on his or her risk of having an accident.” He added: “To do this, we use many different rating factors, which sometimes include non-driving factors, that have been proven to be predictive of a person's likelihood of being involved in a crash. Because different insurers use different information, which can cause rates to vary widely, we encourage consumers to shop around to find the combination of price and service that's best for them.”

Alex Hageli, director of personal lines for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, disputed the federation's position in an e-mail, saying that data have shown “consumers' age, marital status, place of residence and occupation to be among the best predictors of future loss.” When such factors are “blended together” with criteria like driving experience, previous claims and vehicle age, he said, “these factors help to ensure that low-risk consumers can be better identified and pay less for insurance. In the final analysis, consumers benefit when insurance underwriting and rating decisions are ba sed on a wide variety of fair and objective factors.”

Loretta Worters, spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group,  said in an e-mail, “What's missing from the C.F.A.'s analysis is that every one of these factors that they attack is correlated, and highly correlated, with loss.”

Mr. Hunter of the consumer federation said his concern with using factors like occupation and education is that such factors are “surrogates” for criteria that states aren't allowed to use in setting premiums, like income. At the very least, insurers should give less weight to non-driving factors in setting premiums, he said.

Los Angeles had the lowest quotes, he said, because California limits the use of non-driving factors in setting insurance rates. It is up to state insurance commissioners and legislatures to take action, he said, because auto insurance is regulated at the state level.

“We're not trying to say get rid of these entir ely,” he said. “We're saying, you have to look at the combined effect and study these factors more carefully.”

Using non-driving factors drives up premiums, and forces many working families to drive without insurance, even though they risk paying fines or criminal charges for doing so. “Many low- and moderate-income citizens can't afford required insurance because insurers use unfair rating factors,” he said.

Do you think non-driving factors should be used to help determine insurance premiums?

Fandango.com Hires Away Entertainment Weekly\'s Longtime Oscar Expert

By BROOKS BARNES

In a blow to Entertainment Weekly, the magazine's longtime Oscar expert, Dave Karger, is jumping ship for a new job at the movie ticket seller Fandango.com.

“It's a tremendous opportunity that was impossible to turn down,” Mr. Karger said by telephone early Thursday of his new role, which will be the newly created position of chief correspondent. He added: “It's not because I was unhappy in my old job. Fandango is on such a roll right now.”

Fandango, owned by Comcast's NBCUniversal, has been planning for some time to move beyond selling tickets into related programming like news and commentary. Now that the company processes the bulk of online and mobile movie ticket sales in the United States, executives there see an opportunity to use its distribution platform in other ways, and sell more advertising in the process.

Prying Mr. Karger loose from Entertainment Weekly, the Time Inc. magazine, is a coup for Fandango. A 17-year veteran of the magazine and Web site, he in many ways served as its public face, at least during Oscar season, popping up with peppy awards commentary on the “Today” show, “Access Hollywood” and other programs. Last year, Mr. Karger was named an official red carpet greeter for Oscar night by the Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences.

Mr. Karger, 39, will now be the face of Fandango, working on its programming strategy and available to appear - on behalf of Fandango - across NBCUniversal's news and entertainment outlets, which include “Today” and the E! network.

“This is a big step for Fandango as it evolves into a true entertainment brand,” said Hilary Smith, an NBCUniversal senior vice president of digital communications and integrated marketing, to whom Mr. Karger will report.

Entertainment Weekly has perked up considerably in the last couple years under its editor, Jess Cagle, but i s still engaged in a continual battle for relevance in an era when its bread and butter - the deep coverage of entertainment for fans - has been diminished by a plethora of blogs. What was Mr. Cagle's response to Mr. Karger's departure?

“He was a total prince, supportive and enthusiastic, and I will never forget it,” Mr. Karger said.

Brooks Barnes writes about Hollywood with an emphasis on Disney. Follow @brooksbarnesnyt on Twitter.

Times Selects Deborah Needleman to Run Its Style Magazines

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

Deborah Needleman, the editor in chief of The Wall Street Journal's style magazine, has been hired to run T: The New York Times Style Magazine, the Times announced Tuesday. Ms. Needleman is taking over a franchise that publishes 15 magazines a year and is closely followed in the fashion industry.

Ms. Needleman will replace Sally Singer, a former Vogue editor who left The Times in August after running the T magazines for two years.

Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times, said she expects Ms. Needleman to help drive T's expansion.

“Deborah is a creative and innovative editor with an impeccable sense of style and design,” Ms. Abramson said in a statement. “As we look to expand and extend T and continue to evolve it for our loyal and sophisticated New York Times audience, we will rely on Deborah's broad range of experience and creative energy. She is coming on board to strengthen the franchi se and re-imagine its future on all platforms.”

In addition to running the Journal's style magazine, WSJ, Ms. Needleman oversees the paper's weekend lifestyle section, called Off Duty. Earlier in her career she founded the style and decorating magazine Domino, and was an editor at large for House & Garden. She also co-authored ”The Domino Book of Decorating” and wrote ”The Perfectly Imperfect Home.”

The Breakfast Meeting: N.F.L. Quickly Reverses on Referees, and Satire Gone Wild

September 27, 2012, 9:12 am

By NOAM COHEN

The debacle of an ending to “Monday Night Football” on ESPN apparently was enough to propel a settlement Wednesday night to the lockout of N.F.L. referees, Judy Battista reported. Under the eight-year labor deal, pensions will remain in place for current officials through the 2016 season; new officials will get a 401(k) instead. The average official's salary will rise to $173,000 in 2013 from $149,000 in 2011.

• The league's commissioner, Roger Goodell, is lifting the lockout Thursday to allow a crew of regular officials to work the game on the NFL Network between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns. The new contract is expected to be ratified on Saturday to allow regular crews to work Sun day's games.
• Sure, the replacement referees were putting the reputation of the league in jeopardy, but while it lasted, the controversy was good for ratings, USA Today noted. The 90-minute SportsCenter on ESPN immediately following Monday night's game, as late as it was, had more than six million viewers and was the most-viewed Sports Center in its history.

David Pogue took a drive with the map application Apple provides users of its new iPhone 5, having booted the Google maps app that was installed with earlier iPhones. Suffice to say it didn't end well. The iPhone 5 maps, he writes, “may be the most embarrassing, least usable piece of software Apple has ever unleashed.”

In a sign either of how eager commentators are to repeat embarrassing stories about the Romney campaign or how difficult it is to write successful satire, or perhaps both, a column by Roger Simon on the Politico Web site now carries an editor's note: “Some readers were confus ed that this Roger Simon column was satire.” The Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell were among those who took the juicier, if ultimately fabricated, details from Mr. Simon's column, and ran with them, Trip Gabriel writes, including the “anecdote” that Paul Ryan had taken to calling the man at the top of ticket, Mitt Romney, “the Stench.” In a note appended to the column, Mr. Simon alludes to Swift's “Modest Proposal,” but perhaps in this hotly contested elections season, Orson Welles's “War of the Worlds” is the better example.

The new novel by J.K. Rowling, “The Casual Vacancy,” is decidedly adult fare as “suicide, rape, heroin addiction, beatings and thoughts of patricide percolate through its pages,” Michiko Kakutani writes in her review Thursday morning. Ms. Rowling's urge to leave the world of wizardry for Muggle-land is understandable, Ms. Kakutani writes, but “unfortunately, the real-life world she has limn ed in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that ‘The Casual Vacancy' is not only disappointing - it's dull.”

Thursday Reading: Ski Resort to Use Treated Sewage to Make Snow

September 27, 2012, 8:15 am

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Thursday Reading: Ski Resort to Use Treated Sewage to Make Snow

September 27, 2012, 8:15 am

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Andy Williams, a TV Star When Variety Shows Were Just Hanging On

By BILL CARTER

In this YouTube clip, Andy Williams is with Antônio Carlos Jobim to sing “The Girl From Ipanema.”

Andy Williams, who died Wednesday at the age of 84, was mostly known for his mellow crooning style but he was, for much of the 1960's, well traveled in the declining genre called the variety show.

“The Andy Williams Show,” appeared in various forms, and for various networks - Mr. Williams had shows on each of the three broadcast networks during his career. He started with summer series first on ABC in 1958, and then on CBS in 1959, but he was best known for his initial five-year run on NBC.

None of the shows was ever a significant hit, which probably accounted for its many different locations on the television schedule. The NBC show alone played on Thursday night, Tuesday night, Monday night and Sunday night. And it never cracked the top 30 rated shows on television. Despite that, he won three Emmy Awards over the years for outstanding variety series.

The program, which also introduced the Osmond Brothers to big-time show business, came in an era when many variety shows built around mainstream singers, like Perry Como and Dinah Shore, were fading from television. Mr. Williams's second NBC entry made an effort to be more contemporary, with a psychedelic set and music guests that rocked a bit more than the Osmonds (the Bee Gees and Creedence Clearwater Revival were booked, though Liberace and, yes, the Osmonds, also appeared). By that time, the variety genre had shifted mainly to comedy stars like Carol Burnett.

Later, Mr. Williams mainly stuck to popular Christmas specials, which also helped him sell a lot of albums.

The Obituary

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Why Credit Scores Aren\'t Always What They Seem

September 26, 2012, 1:48 pm

By ANN CARRNS

When consumers buy access to their credit score, there's a good chance they're not seeing the same score a lender sees, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reports.

Specifically, one in five consumers who pays for a score from one of the major credit bureaus will probably receive a meaningfully different score than the one a lender will use to make a decision about lending the consumer money, the agency says.

That's because the scores sold to consumers are not necessarily generated by the scoring models used to create scores sold to lenders - usually, some version of the FICO score, created by the company of the same name. Rather, consumers may be sold “educational” scores, created by using different models.

Even if consumers buy a FICO score - like those at the myfico.com Web site, which offers scores generated by credit data from the TransUnion and Equifax credit agencies - and go to a lender that uses FICO scores, the purchased score still may not be the one that particular creditor uses. That's because there are many different versions of the FICO score, depending on various factors, like the type of credit a consumer is applying for, the version of FICO's model the lender is using and the credit bureau the lender uses.

For its analysis, the agency looked at credit scores generated from 200,000 randomly selected credit files at each of the three major credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

For a majority of consumers, the agency found, the scores produced by different scoring models provided similar information about the relative creditworthiness of the consumers. But for a substantial minority, diff erent scoring models gave meaningfully different results.

A meaningful difference, the agency said, means the consumer would probably qualify for better or worse credit offers than those they would expect to get based on the score they bought. As a result, the bureau concluded, consumers shouldn't rely exclusively on those scores to gauge how a lender would evaluate their creditworthiness.

The report stopped short of saying that credit scores bought by consumers were worthless. But it's hard to see why you should pay for a score if you can't be certain that it's the one a lender would use. After all, isn't that why you want to see it in the first place?

The agency recommended that firms selling scores make consumers aware that the scores they buy may vary substantially from scores used by creditors. And it's possible the agency will recommend changes in the way scores are marketed to consumers, when it assumes regulatory authority over the credit bureaus th is month.

For now, the agency advises consumers to be aware that multiple versions of credit scores exist. And they should periodically review their credit reports, which provide the raw data used to produce credit scores, and dispute any errors.

John Ulzheimer, a credit expert, said the agency's report suggested that scores being sold to consumers were a “fairly good approximation” of their FICO score, but were “clearly not good enough.”

Chi Chi Wu, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, said in a statement that the “obvious policy solution” was for Congress to grant consumers the right to a free annual copy of the score most widely used by lenders. Right now, consumers can get a free copy annually of their credit report - on which credit scores are based - but not of their credit score.

Do you think a free annual peek at your basic FICO credit score would be beneficial?

Executive Producer of \'Today\' Says Ouster of Ann Curry Was His Call

By BILL CARTER

Commenting publicly for the first time about the decision to remove Ann Curry from the “Today” show's co-anchor position after only a year on the job, Jim Bell, the show's executive producer, said Wednesday that it “was absolutely my call.”

In a telephone interview, Mr. Bell spoke broadly about the show's recent ratings setbacks, including the end of its 16-year weekly winning streak. He offered numerous reasons that ABC's “Good Morning, America” had taken over as the regular leader in the morning news competition, including the sheer difficulty of maintaining dominance for so long a time.

But he especially pointed to what he called the difference in the show's approaches, calling “Today” a “more serious show” and accusing “GMA” of “doing something else.”

Asked if he was saying “GMA” is now a tabloid-style program, Mr. Bell said, “That's what I'm saying.”

Mr. Bell declined to call the original decision to name Ms. Curry to the anchor position a mistake, but he said that she is now “in the role she is naturally suited for.” (Ms. Curry has become a special correspondent for the show reporting, so far, mostly on international stories; for example, on Wednesday morning, she interviewed the president of Libya, Mohammed Magarief.)

Mr. Bell defended the insertion of Savannah Guthrie as the co-anchor beside Matt Lauer, calling her an important part of the “long view” plan to regain pre-eminence for the “Today” show. He said of the original choice of Ms. Curry to succeed Meredith Vieira: “Ann had earned it. Hindsight is 20/20. You can sit there and think this or that, but we're comfortable with that decision and the one we've made now.”

“Today” lost its long-standing lead over ABC's “GMA” in April, before Ms. Curry was ousted from the anchor job at the end of June. But even after NBC's Olympics coverage - and with Ms . Guthrie now the co-anchor - “Today” has lost every week to ABC in terms of total viewers. For the last four weeks, the show has trailed in the critical category of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54, which determines ad sales for news programs.

Mr. Bell specifically denied reports that have circulated recently that the decision to remove Ms. Curry was a response to demands by Mr. Lauer, who recently renegotiated his contract. “It was definitely not Matt's call,” Mr. Bell said. “He is the host and does not have management responsibility. It was not his call. That was my call.”

Mr. Bell said that rumors that he had a lunch with Mr. Lauer at which the anchor made a change on the co-anchor role a quid pro quo for his re-signing, were “absolutely not true.”

Mr. Bell expressed anger and incredulity at recent reports that Mr. Lauer had been been more vocal in his demands about the show, and had begun berating sta ff members. “These stories portraying Matt in a negative light are just preposterous,” Mr. Bell said. “Matt is the heart and soul of the broadcast. He has a heart of gold. This stuff about him has been very irresponsible and in a lot of cases flat-out wrong.”

Nor is “Today” facing any budget cuts to make up for paying Mr. Lauer a reported $25 million a year, Mr. Bell said. “There is no plan for any cutbacks of layoffs for any of the staff,” he said. As for any reduction to Matt's salary, which was reported in The Daily News this week, “That could not be more wrong,” Mr. Bell said.

“Today” should be facing a downturn in its profits, given its recent ratings declines. But the show was mostly sold out for the year during sales in advance of the television season, so “Today” effectively could have a year to fix itself before the financial impact is fully felt.

Asked what viewers could expect in the way of changes to affect this long- view approach, Mr. Bell said, “You just have to watch.”

Bill Carter writes about the television industry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

The Annual Health Benefits Gamble

September 26, 2012, 10:47 am

By ANN CARRNS

It's soon to be open enrollment season for many workplace health plans, when employees choose their coverage for the coming year. And while this may be an annual ritual, many workers, according to a recent survey, have trouble determining which plan is right for them.

Choosing annual benefits is often a gamble, even if, like my family, you're fortunate enough to be in good health and have pretty good insurance options. None of us has a serious chronic condition, and we use few prescription medications. So last year, after weighing our choices, we opted to keep our monthly premiums low by going with what we considered to be a substantial ($5,000 plus) family deductible. Everyone was reasonably healthy, we reasoned. Our children are well out of the phase when they catch every bug going around school, and we had enough emergency savings in case something pricey cropped up.

Essentially, we considered the odds and wagered that the coming year would be like the last year. And we pretty much lost that bet.

Illness happens, even to generally healthy people. For various reasons, our family ended up having unusually frequent visits to the doctor (not to mention the dentist, but that's another issue). So we quickly exhausted the upfront health “credit” that our plan provides, to cover costs before the deductible must be met. We probably won't top our deductible, but we're still (ouch) a couple of thousand dollars out of pocket. Our overall bill at the end of the year would probably be lower if we had gone with a higher premium and a lower deductible.

So it's no surprise to me that a survey from the health insurer Aetna found that cons umers think health care benefits decisions are confusing, second only to retirement savings in complexity.

The Aetna Empowered Health Index Survey was conducted over the phone, including both land line and cellphones, by KRC Research in late July among 1,500 adults. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percent.

A quarter of Americans who have health insurance told the pollsters that they found it difficult to make the right health decisions. They said the available information was confusing and complicated (88 percent), there was conflicting information (84 percent), and it was difficult to know which plan is right for them (83 percent).

Also, 81 percent said they found it difficult to make decisions because they didn't know the cost of various medical procedures.

It all sounds dishearteningly familiar, as we prepare to evaluate our choices again.

On the plus side, health plans this fall are required by the Affordable Care Act to pro vide a simple-language “Summary of Benefits and Coverage” form, to help consumers compare health plan options. Consumers Union, which helped test the format of the disclosure form before it was adopted by the federal government, offers a sample form online. It also includes a coverage example of how much certain events, like having a baby, would cost under the plan. You also can give your opinion on the form you receive online. The forms are available to people insured through employers, as well as those shopping for insurance on their own. If you don't get such a form, you should contact your insurer or your employer, Consumers Union advises.

How do you make decisions about health benefits coverage? Does your plan offer helpful tools for making the choice?

Wednesday Reading: Making Vegan Food The New Normal

September 26, 2012, 9:00 am

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

The Breakfast Meeting: The Nook as \'iPad Lite,\' and Lessons From the Olympics

September 26, 2012, 8:35 am

By THE EDITORS

Roughly 217 million people watched Olympic coverage on NBC networks during the London games and eight million people downloaded NBC's mobile apps for the Olympics, according to new figures released by the network, part of a vast trove of consumer research based on viewing during the games. Watching video on tablet computers â€" no surprise â€" also surged and the most popular events on any device were women's gymnastics and the women's soccer final. The good news for the network: the popularity of the live feed during the day didn't seem to cannibalize viewers from NBC's primetime package.

Barnes & Noble tried on Tuesday to position its Nook tablet as a kind of iPad Lite with the introduction of the Nook HD, a seven-inch device that sells for $199 and the nine-inch Nook HD Plus for $269. The company also announced a video service for the Nook color devices similar to the iTunes store and includes movies and TV series from Disney, Viacom and Warner Brothers.

Jonah Lehrer, the book author and former writer for the New Yorker, told Amy Wallace that he planned to write about the considerable fallout from his plagiarism scandal. Perhaps the biggest surprise in her piece for the Los Angeles Magazine is that she was only the third reporter to reach out directly to Mr. Lehrer for comment. “Apparently Lehrer wasn't the only person guilty of laziness,” she writes.

Target, the discount retailer whose ubiquitous television commercials have helped create a hip image, is using some well-known Hollywood talent to push further into branded entertainment. A new short film called “Falling for You” features Kristen Bell and Nia Long and is directed by Phil Abraham, who was nominated for an Emmy for his work on “Mad Men.” Ms. Bell, who cut her teeth on the popular TV show “Veronica Mars,” said, “I do think that as actors we have to understand the fact that no one watches commercials any more.”

Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, the two former News Corporation employees who are at the center of the cellphone-hacking scandal, appeared to court on Wednesday in London and had their trial dates set for next September. Prosecutors said the case encompasses 600 victims.

On another front, the BBC is furiously apologizing after a correspondent let slip in a radio interview that Queen Elizabeth II was “pretty upset” over the presence of a Muslim cleric in London who preaches violent anti-British jihad. It's considered a huge breach of etiquette for reporters to reveal the queen's private opinions. “Yes, I thought I'd drop that in,” the correspondent, Frank Gardner, said during the original broadcast. “She told me.”

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Iran Will Boycott Oscars to Protest Anti-Muslim Video

September 26, 2012, 7:36 am

By BROOKS BARNES

The boycott appears straightforward: Mohammad Hosseini, Iran's culture minister, on Tuesday confirmed that his country would not submit a film for consideration at next year's Oscars in protest of “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Islam YouTube video that has sparked deadly riots. He specifically cited the “failure” of Oscar organizers to take an official position on the incendiary “film.”
But Iran's move left Hollywood scratching its head. Iran, which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film earlier this year, was seriously going to boycott moviedom's biggest prize because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hadn't denounced a crude YouTube video made by a former gas s tation owner? (The academy had no comment.)

The deadline for submissions is Oct. 1, and the country had planned to submit Reza Mirkarimi's “A Cube of Sugar,” a dramatic comedy about a wedding that turns into a funeral; Variety called the picture “slim but vibrant” in its review.

The movie site HitFix.com wondered this: If a viral video is causing outrage by depicting one's culture in a negative light, what sense does it make to deny Western exposure to more positive cultural expressions of your country? “Sitting out this particular Oscar race,” Hitfix concluded in an echo of what other movie experts were saying on Tuesday, “is a gesture so minor as to affect only the filmmaker who would otherwise compete.”
Iran's winning submission at the last Oscars, “A Separation,” about a collapsing marriage, was also dragged into politics, to the consternation of its director, Asghar Farhadi. After it won - beating out an Israeli submission and three others - Javad Shamaghdari, the top official at Iran's cinema agency, described it as “the beginning of the collapse” of Israeli influence in America.

Average A.T.M. Surcharge Reaches New High

September 25, 2012, 2:21 pm

By ANN CARRNS

It's getting more important to consider the size and scope of your bank's network of A.T.M.'s if you use them frequently.

An annual analysis of checking accounts from Bankrate.com finds that the average A.T.M. surcharge - the fee charged by the machine's operator to a noncustomer - rose 4 percent to a new record of $2.50.

This is the eighth consecutive year that the average surcharge has increased. And, for the first time, all of the banks surveyed by Bankrate.com for the report charge noncustomers to use their A.T.M.'s.

The increases are part of an overall attempt by banks to replace fee revenue lost because of new caps on the amount they can charge retailers for debit-card transactions.

The surcharge gets even more expensive when your own bank gets into the act, charging you - its customer - for using a competitor's machine. This fee rose 11 percent, to $1.57.

For a customer encountering both fees, the average total of $4.07 is also a new record. It is up almost 7 percent from last year.

What steps do you take to avoid A.T.M. surcharges? And what's the biggest one you've ever paid?

TCM to Screen \'Forbidden Planet\' on Land and on the Space Station

September 25, 2012, 1:43 pm

By STUART ELLIOTT

The Turner Classic Movies cable channel is joining with NASA to give an out-of-this-world opening to a series of film screenings.

“Forbidden Planet,” the 1956 science fiction film that introduced Robby the Robot, will be the first movie in the next Road to Hollywood screening series sponsored by TCM, part of the Turner Broadcasting System unit of Time Warner.

The film is scheduled to be shown Oct. 13 at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida, and also transmitted to the International Space Station for viewing by the astronauts on board; movies are part of what NASA calls psych support, or psychological support, for astronauts aboard the space station.

One of those astronaut s, the American Sunita Williams, is to introduce “Forbidden Planet” from space to the attendees at the Kennedy Space Center screening. (Free tickets to the “Forbidden Planet” screening may be obtained on a section of tcm.com.)

Bert Ulrich, the multimedia liaison for film and television collaboration at NASA in Washington, said, “We were approached by TCM to see whether we'd be interested in showing a classic movie on the International Space Station.”

“We said, sure,” he added, because the agency is always looking for methods “to engage people with space exploration.”

The movies that are part of the psych support program are intended as “a way to keep our astronauts happy,” Mr. Ulrich said.

Other films that have been provided to the space station include “Star Trek” and “The Avengers,” Mr. Ulrich said, adding that there is no requirement the films be about space or superheroes.

The TCM screenings - there will be 10 altogether, two this year and eight early next year - are meant to serve as a curtain-raiser for the fourth annual TCM Classic Film Festival, to be held in Hollywood, April 25 to 28, 2013.

The reason that “Forbidden Planet” is being screened in Florida and in space is that its subject matter fits with the theme that TCM has chosen for the screenings and the film festival, which is “Cinematic Journeys: Travel in the Movies.”

“We consider space to be TCM's ‘final frontier,'” said Jeff Gregor, general manager at TCM as well as chief marketing officer at two sister cable channels, TBS and TNT. (Yes, he was quoting the famed “Star Trek” phrase.)

Movies on TCM are uncut and uninterrupted by commercials, which has daunted some marketers that eagerly sign sponsorship deals with cable channels that run spots before, after or even during films. There have, however, been agreements between TCM and brands, including Arch itectural Digest magazine and Bloomingdale's.

Another reason Turner Classic Movies may not attract sponsors is a perception that its viewers are older than those who watch other movie or entertainment channels. “TCM is for all ages,” Mr. Gregor said, citing “extensive research” conducted in the last 18 months “to understand our fans.”

The research shows that the channel appeals to viewers ages 18 to 49 who are “cultural engagers” and “relevancy seekers,” he added, meaning they are interested in classic films because those films influence the movies that are made today.

“We don't have to work too hard to make TCM contemporary,” Mr. Gregor said, adding that there are plans to update the channel that include “refreshing our graphics.”

TCM said last week that it would increase the hosting duties on the channel for Ben Mankiewicz, who is 45, as Robert Osborne, 80, devotes more time to events like the film festival and the screen ings.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.

First Night of the New Season Has NBC and CBS Swapping Places

By BILL CARTER

The first night of the official network television season turned the competition almost on its head as NBC dominated in the advertiser-preferred ratings, ABC dominated with older viewers, CBS saw its Monday lineup take a dive and Fox took a general battering.

The biggest headlines: “The Voice” continues to be a force for NBC, and a new 10 p.m. drama “Revolution” remained a winner, though viewer falloff at its half-hour point may signal some weakening appeal.

The former foundation stone of ABC's schedule, “Dancing with the Stars,” opened with its worst rating ever for a premiere in the 18-49-year-old audience that ABC sells to advertisers.

CBS expected to be down from a huge premiere Monday last year (fueled by the funeral for Charlie Sheen's character on “Two and Half Men”), and it was, maybe more than expected. Its new comedy entry at 8:30 “Partners” stunted the comedy block, and the 10 p.m. dr ama “Hawaii Five-0” had a disastrous premiere, its lowest rating for any episode ever.

Fox got a respectable performance â€" considering the competition-from “Bones” at 8, but its new drama, “The Mob Doctor,” cemented its status (and its shoes probably) as the likely first cancellation this season.

On NBC, “The Voice” was the night's biggest show in the 18-49 category, averaging a 4.3 and seeing growth every half hour. It had about 12 million total viewers. “Revolution” dominated the 10 p.m. hour with a 3.5 rating, but it fell from a 3.8 in first half hour to a 3.2 in the second. It had 9.2 million viewers.

CBS could never match last season's opening Monday, especially because it rebuilt the night and moved “Two and a Half Men” to Thursday. So the 3.4 rating for “How I Met Your Mother” at 8 p.m. ( 8.6 million viewers) was fine. But the 2.4 (with 6.5 million) at 8:30 for the new comedy “Partners” knocked CBS's night backwards. It recovered at 9 with a 3.7 and 10 million viewers for “Two Broke Girls” and evened out with a 3.0 and 9.3 million for “Mike and Molly.” But “Hawaii Five-0 collapsed at 10 with just a 1.9 rating and 7.9 million viewers.

ABC may have reason for most concern because it put so much into promoting an “all-star” edition of “Dancing.” The results pointed even more to a shift in that show's appeal to a heavy portion of older women. “Dancing” attracted the biggest overall audience of the night, 14.5 million, but its 18-49 rating was its worst ever for a premiere, a 2.7. The 10 p.m. drama “Castle” at least grabbed second place in the hour over “Five-0” averaging a 2.4 rating and 11.4 million viewers.

“Bones” on Fox hung in with a 2.3 rating and 7.3 million viewers, but “The Mob Doctor” went south for a second week, with a 1.3 rating and just 3.9 million viewers.

Bill Carter writes about the television ind ustry. Follow @wjcarter on Twitter.

Barnes & Noble to Introduce New Video Service for Nook Devices

September 25, 2012, 12:39 pm

By JULIE BOSMAN and AMY CHOZICK

Barnes & Noble said on Tuesday it would introduce a new video store for its Nook products this fall, the latest expansion of the bookseller's digital content.

The service will allow customers to stream and download movies and television shows for a fee onto TV's and mobile devices, while storing the content in the Nook cloud. The video catalog includes HBO shows, like “Game of Thrones” and “True Blood,” and movies including “The Artist” and “Toy Story 3.”

Barnes & Noble has focused heavily on its digital offerings to compete with retailers like Amazon and Apple. In April, it received a boost when Microsoft said it would invest hundreds of millions of do llars in the bookseller's digital division.

Barnes & Noble's Nook enters a crowded market of digital rental services that let viewers download movies and television shows to mobile devices. The video streaming service would be similar to Apple's iTunes in that viewers could rent single episodes, movies or whole TV seasons. Wal-Mart entered the streaming business in 2010 with its $100 million acquisition of Vudu, which allows viewers to rent high-definition movies on Internet-enabled televisions. Many new television sets now come with the Vudu and Netfix apps built in. Verizon and Redbox recently partnered to introduce their own streaming service.

Major studies have taken a blow in home video revenue in recent years as DVD sales and traditional rentals decline. Deals like the one with Barnes & Noble help bring in additional rental revenue and offer viewers another outlet on which to find content. That's in combination with home-grown streaming services like HBO Go, which requires users to authenticate that they pay for Time Warner's HBO before accessing hundreds of episodes of past and current shows on tablets and mobile devices.

William J. Lynch, the chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said in a statement, “As one of the world's largest retailers of physical video discs and digital copyrighted content, our new Nook Video service will give our customers another way to be entertained with a vast and growing digital video collection, as part of our expansive Nook store.”

Barnes & Noble currently has about 25 percent of the e-book market. In August, the company reported a loss of $41 million, or 78 cents a share, in the quarter ending July 28. Nook sales were flat over the previous year, at $192 million.

On Tuesday, Barnes & Noble also signaled its intentions to build a bigger presence in Britain. It said the company Dixons Retail, which owns the electronics retailers PC World and Curry s, would sell Nook products in 600 stores. Barnes & Noble also named Patrick Nourvillois as a managing director responsible for building the Nook brand “outside the U.S. across the globe.”

How Many Government Programs Have You Benefited From?

September 25, 2012, 11:16 am

By ANN CARRNS

Mitt Romney stirred up a hornet's nest with his comments about the 47 percent of Americans who he thinks are dependent on the government.

It turns out, according to 2008 data from the Cornell Survey Research Institute reported Monday in a Times opinion piece, that 96 percent of Americans have taken part in government benefit programs in one form or another.

Listed below are 21 programs referenced by the researchers. Numbers 1 through 13 are “direct,” meaning that the aid comes directly from the government; the remainder are considered “submerged,” in that they come indirectly, through government tax policies. (For instance, the money you put in your workplace 401(k) plan grows tax-deferred).

1. Head Start
2. Social Security Disability
3. Social Security Retirement and Survivors Benefits
4. Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
5. Medicaid
6. Medicare
7. Welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or T.A.N.F.)
8. G.I. Bill
9. Veterans' benefits
10. Pell Grants
11. Unemployment Insurance
12. Food Stamps
13. Government Subsidized Housing
14. Home Mortgage Interest Deduction
15. Hope and Lifetime Learning Tax Credits
16. Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
17. 529 accounts (qualified tuition programs) or Coverdell education savings account (Education I.R.A.'s)
18. Earned-income tax credit
19. Employer subsidized health insurance
20. Employer subsidized retirement benefits
21. Federal student loans

In an e-mail, Suzanne Mettler, a professor of government at Cornell, explained a bit more about the two forms of employer benefits (Numbers 19 and 20), saying th ey “are even more submerged than the other policies in that group, because unlike with the others, people take no actual steps to claim the government benefit. As long as one is acquiring those employer-provided benefits, one simply gets the tax benefit - if the employer put the same money in people's paychecks, they would have to owe taxes on it.”

I personally have benefited from student loans, the home mortgage deduction and employer health and retirement benefits, and my children have 529 education savings plans. My dad went to college (proudly) on the G.I. Bill. My upbringing was middle class.

Take a look at the list and let us know: How many of these have you received or relied on? Are you poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class, or part of the 1 percent?

Short Film by Target Draws Big-Name Talent

By TANZINA VEGA

Target on Tuesday will announce its most ambitious foray into so-called “branded entertainment,” a 12-minute-long film, “Falling for You,” that will showcase more than 100 home, beauty and fashion items the company is promoting for the fall season.

The film will be doled out to viewers in three episodes, with the first making its debut on Oct. 2 online. Subsequent episodes will debut on Oct. 4 and Oct. 9.

“For us it was innovation, taking it to that next level,” said Shawn Gensch, the senior vice president of marketing at Target. “We have a great story that we want to share.”

The film stars the actors Kristen Bell, Nia Long and Zachary Abel, and was directed by Phil Abraham, who was nominated for an Emmy this year for his work on “Mad Men.”

The film tells of two Target employees, Ms. Bell and Mr. Abel, who flirt and compete with each other. In the first episode, Ms. Long, the couple's bo ss, gives them an assignment to create a campaign for the Target fall collection. The winning idea will debut on Oct. 10 at a live event in New York City.

Items featured in the video will appear on a sidebar on the right-hand side of the screen. Users can click on a “heart” icon to purchase the item and on a “share” button to post to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Billy Jurewicz, the chief executive of Space150, the Minneapolis-based agency that worked on the video, said that while the video was meant to encourage shopping and sharing content, the sharing and shopping tools were purposely left to the side of the main screen so they would not interfere with the video.

“We want to keep it a little bit more authentic and a bit in the background,” Mr. Jurewicz said.

Ms. Bell described the rise of branded-content projects as “a necessary investment” needed to get the financing for creative projec ts. “You can't really just sell entertainment any more because no one will pay for it,” Ms. Bell said.

A branded film like “Falling for You” is different than other forms of advertising because it is “less pushy” than product placement or traditional television spots, Ms. Bell said. “I do think that as actors we have to understand the fact that no one watches commercials any more,” she said.

Tanzina Vega writes about advertising and digital media. Follow @tanzinavega on Twitter.

The Breakfast Meeting: It\'s Showtime\'s Time, and N.F.L.\'s Monday Night Hangover

September 25, 2012, 9:28 am

By NOAM COHEN

The Emmy awards won by the tense, terrorism-centric Showtime series “Homeland” could not have come at a better time for the network, or the series, Brian Stelter writes. The awards - including best drama, best actress (Claire Danes), best actor (Damian Lewis) - represent a coming of age for the network, which had never received a series prize for comedy or drama and has long been in the shadow of the Emmy-award-laden HBO. With the second season of “Homeland” beginning on Sunday, the subscription network was immediately setting out to capitalize on the wins. “I think there might be some extra activity at the call centers this week,” said David Nevins, president for entertainment at Showtime.

New s of worker unrest at a large factory of Foxconn, which supplies electronics giants including Apple, was able to spread quickly from Taiyuan, China, across the globe with the aid of social-media tools. The incident was said to have involved 2,000 workers and was quelled with 5,000 police officers, offering a glimpse at the tensions in China, where workers are more aware of their rights yet have few outlets to challenge their working conditions and wages, David Barboza and Keith Bradsher reported. They quote a man who posted images of the protests online and said he was a Foxconn employee: “At first it was a conflict between the security guards and some workers. But I think the real reason is they were frustrated with life.”

The home-team Seattle Seahawks defeated the Green Bay Packers on a controversial final play of “Monday Night Football,” in what commentators say could be the final straw for the league's lockout of its referees. The replacement referees by a ll accounts had a bad weekend, but the final play on Monday was particularly mocked â€" not only did it hand victory to the Seahawks, but there arguably were multiple missed calls and bad judgments. (The Fifth Down blog has the details.) Social media was abuzz with anger, including a star from a different sport, LeBron James, who chimed in on Twitter:

These replacement refs gotta go man!! Packers just got game took from them. I LOVE NFL football to much to see this type of work.

- LeBron James (@KingJames) September 25, 2012

The leading bidder for Variety is Penske Media Group, the owner of Deadline, the online rival for Hollywood news led by Nikki Finke, The Los Angeles Times reported. The deal, which would include Penske Media and the private equity fund Shamrock Capital Advisors, could close in the next three weeks at around $30 million, the newspaper reported, with the plan to keep the Variety and Deadline brands separate.

Tuesday Reading: When Surgeons Leave Objects in Your Body

September 25, 2012, 8:33 am

By ANN CARRNS

A variety of consumer-focused articles appears daily in The New York Times and on our blogs. Each weekday morning, we gather them together here so you can quickly scan the news that could hit you in your wallet.

Lyor Cohen Resigns From Warner Music

September 24, 2012, 7:26 pm

By BEN SISARIO

Lyor Cohen, the dominant creative executive at the Warner Music Group for the last eight years, has resigned from the company, Warner announced on Monday. His departure adds another piece to the chess game of top music executives who are now free agents as the industry adjusts to changes in the wake of the Universal Music Group's absorption of most of EMI.

Mr. Cohen, 52, was chief executive of Warner's recorded music division, with authority over all its labels around the world, including Warner Brothers Records, Atlantic and Elektra. He reported to Stephen Cooper, the corporate turnaround expert who was installed as chief executive by Access Industries, the conglomerate that bought Warner in May 2011 for $3.3 billion.

In a characteristically non-corporate statement, Mr. Cohen left with a pep talk for his employees. “To all the artists and employees who live and die for the music every day,” he said in a statement, “and who personally sacrifice for the good of the creative process: ‘keep on keepin' on' in the tradition of a company that respects and honors the artistic community.”

His resignation is effective at the end of the month.

Mr. Cohen joined Warner in early 2004, shortly after Edgar M. Bronfman Jr. and a group of private equity investors bought the company from Time Warner, and since then has been the top figure on the company's recorded music side. (It also has a music publishing division, led by Cameron Strang.)

A former rap promoter who led Def Jam Records in its early days, Mr. Cohen is known for an indefatigable confidence and boldness that has made him something of a legend in the industry. I n “Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis,” a recent book by Fred Goodman, Mr. Cohen was described as “almost a fictional character” for his hard-charging persona.

No reason was given for Mr. Cohen's departure, but he was known to be negotiating for a new employment contract. Last year, Mr. Cohen earned nearly $11 million in total compensation, more than any other employee, including Mr. Bronfman, according to Warner's annual report.

A replacement was not named, and for the time being the leaders of Warner's labels will report directly to Mr. Cooper.

For months industry speculation has centered on Roger Faxon, EMI's chief executive, as a possible leader for Warner. On Friday, after Universal received regulatory clearance for its $1.9 billion takeover of EMI's labels, Mr. Faxon announced his resignation, also effective this week.

In $2 Million Ad Campaign, FreshDirect to Emphasize Food Quality

By STUART ELLIOTT

FreshDirect, the online home-delivery grocer, is preparing a new advertising approach as it seeks to, er, um, freshen its brand image.

A campaign scheduled to begin this week is to introduce a theme, “Grocery shopping perfected,” that is intended as a more engaging way to express the company's philosophy than current lines like “A new standard for grocery shopping.”

(Critics of FreshDirect who decry the tax breaks the company received to build a headquarters in the Bronx or complain about the traffic and fumes generated by its trucks may wince at seeing anything FreshDirect does described as “perfected.”)

The new theme is part of a revamped pitch aimed at busy consumers - primarily working mothers - who care enough about the quality and provenance of the food they buy to pay FreshDirect's prices.

The campaign is the first work from the DiMassimo Goldstein ad agency in New York, which won the Fr eshDirect creative account in a review. The company previously worked with another New York agency, Gotham, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

The campaign includes print advertisements, ads on the side of the seemingly ubiquitous FreshDirect trucks, direct mail, outdoor signs, online banner ads and a presence at events like food festivals.

The campaign takes a humorously light-hearted tack, presenting FreshDirect as the alternative to exaggerated, Herculean efforts to ensure that groceries meet the high standards of its target audience.

A direct-mail piece that shows a woman warring with a bear for salmon asks, “Why fight when you can have the best without breaking a sweat?”

In another ad, a woman is waiting on a servant to empty her private jet of all the fancy cheeses she just bought. FreshDirect is for you, the ad declares, “In case you have to cancel your European cheese shopping trip.”

The new campaign is intended to be a more evolved way to market FreshDirect than the previous method, “a very direct marketing approach, pounding out offers” in the forms of discount coupons, said John Leeman, chief marketing officer at FreshDirect. He joined the company last year after working at media and advertising agencies like Mindshare, Carat and Cliff Freeman & Partners.

The campaign comes after FreshDirect conducted research that suggested the company aim its pitches more directly at “busy people who care about the quality of the food,” Mr. Leeman said, to the point that whether the food is, say, locally produced, sustainably grown, organic or gluten free becomes “part of the value proposition, not just price.” (In other words, to paraphrase the old Hallmark slogan, they care enough about the very best to pay more.)

The focus on the food itself is also intended to counter whatever qualms potential customers may have from shopping at a Web site, wher e they do not get to pick out the merchandise themselves as they would at brick-and-mortar high-end supermarkets like Whole Foods or specialty stores like Zabar's.

“We needed to prove to them that just because they can't see our food on a shelf,” Mr. Leeman said, “the ‘direct' part of FreshDirect ensures that it gets to us directly and then back out to them directly much faster, and fresher, than it would in a store situation, where there are more middlemen and warehouses.”

DiMassimo Goldberg “nailed” that aspect of the campaign, Mr. Leeman said, by being able to “project the origin, the source of the food and romanticizing it.”

“We're trying to show people the ideal situation they wish they could attain but can't get there,” he added.

Mark DiMassimo, chief executive and chief creative officer at DiMassimo Goldstein, said the campaign seeks to portray FreshDirect as “this combination of premium quality and convenience.”

“But if you went out there with ‘premium quality and convenience' ” as the theme, “it wouldn't make anyone's mouth water,” he added, laughing. “This is what you need an ad agency for.”

The intended audience for the campaign, Mr. DiMassimo said, knows that “if you have the time to knock yourself out, there are a number of great stores to go to.”

So the ads suggest that “FreshDirect feeds your life,” he added, because “the food is fresher when we do the work for you.”

The budget for the campaign is hard to estimate because of the value of the ads that appear on the sides of the FreshDirect trucks, which serve as billboards that are hard to miss in many urban neighborhoods.

“If we had to pay for the truck sides,” Mr. Leeman said, the campaign would be valued at $5 million. The spending in media will total $2 million, he added.

FreshDirect is considering adding radio commercials to the campaign in 2013, Mr. Leeman said .

To address some of the complaints about FreshDirect, the company is expanding delivery service to neighborhoods that could be characterized as food deserts, he added, and testing deliveries in two ZIP codes in the Bronx to people who receive food stamps.

And FreshDirect is planning “its first steps toward a transition to an environmentally sustainable fleet of trucks,” Mr. Leeman said.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter.